Diet industry billboards catch our eye at every corner with slogans such as "weight no more" or "waist away". The industry itself really puts the hit on at certain times of the year, such as before and after holidays and in the spring time just before the summer months of bathing suit bodies making their debut. The diet industry reinforces a belief system that says that diets don't work for permanent weight loss. They take the attitude or assume that you still have or again will have a weight problem and just want to let you know what's new on the market to help you with your current weight problem. They never assume that you are able to remain thin after losing some weight. They know better. The best kept secret of the diet industry seems to be that diets don't work (only as a temporary intervention, not as a permanent solution to the problem).

So what about diets. It is estimated that between 20-30% of the United States population are obese; meaning they weight significantly more than what is considered normal or ideal for their height and body frame. (Dranov, 1984) At first it may seem odd that with all of the programs available for people to lose their excess weight that we are not a nation of slender, healthy people, but the problem lies in part with the available weight loss programs. "Diets are the single biggest cause of obesity in this country today". (Rodin, 1983) Dieting can reduce the rate at which the body burns up food in a resting state by as much as 45%. And, to make matters worse, the metabolism doesn't bounce back when the dieting stops. (Rodin, 1983)

Statistics show that less than 5% of the people who diet lose weight permanently. (Patton, 1984) Approximately 90 of every 100 pounds lost in this country is regained. (King, 1984) The Washington Post reports that only one out of every two hundred loses all of their excess weight and keeps it off by dieting. (Schwartz, 1984)

The bottom line is that diets just don't work to solve the problem of obesity. In fact, diets by their very nature are a temporary intervention. (Bruch, 1973) After the person goes off of the diet, they return to their old habits and regain all of the weight back plus some. If the state of deprivation is imposed over a long enough period of time, it becomes a way of life. There is no safe method for rapidly losing a significant amount of fat and then keeping it off for even two years. (Wooley, 1984) People want quick results though, and become impatient when they don't lose weight immediately. Since weight is such a visible symptom, it is often conceived of as a measure of that individual's success or failure. (Bruch, 1973)

One of the most serious consequences of dieting is that it causes people to think obsessively about food. (Patton, 1984) Food becomes the enemy. On a diet there are "good" foods and "bad" foods. "Good" and "bad" are moral judgments. "Good" foods are low-calorie, dietetic foods that a person is supposed to eat to lose weight. "Bad" foods are high-calorie foods that are suppose to be fattening - "cheater's foods" - foods to feel guilty about during and after eating them. These moral judgments of "good" and "bad" are then extended to the person eating the food. If you eat "good" foods, you are a "good" person and if you eat "bad" foods, you are a "bad" person. This is taking the statement "you are what you eat" entirely too literally.

Diets keep people a victim of food forever. (Arenson, 1984) They reinforce the belief that food has the control and a great deal of power over peoples' lives. Food can seem to call out, beckon, and its will must be done. The food must be consumed or else. And once the food gets into the body, it does its "dirty work" so to speak. And if the food just happens to be a food that is "forbidden" on the current diet program, feelings of guilt pour forth, along with a dialogue of negative self-talk about the lack of self control or willpower once again.

Diets keep us just like children. (Arenson, 1984) They get us to give up our control over our food choices, time schedules, food likes and dislikes, eating habits and internal cues in exchange for the "ideal" dietary plan. The diet industry takes on the role of our parent - and a critical, demanding parent at that. Diets perpetuate a feeling of helplessness akin to childhood feelings. We are at the mercy of an industry who says they want to help us, yet we feel helpless while they get rich - at our expense.

Diets perpetuate deprivation and set people up to cheat. They don't allow us (if we are to stick to the program) to eat the foods we enjoy. In fact, they teach us to hate the foods we love and to love the foods we hate. (Arenson, 1984) When dieting, you are not allowed to eat according to your body's needs or desires. This builds up a back log of deprivation that brings on a binge cycle. (Patton, 1984) At that point you have become like a starving animal - starving for the desired food - and when you finally get it, you seem to go out of control with ecstasy and gorge yourself. (Patton, 1984) In fact, the harder and more often you push down a desire, the stronger it becomes. You keep reinforcing the denial of the dietary need.

Denial of individual needs perpetuates a separation of mind ad body, yet the two are interrelated. We were all born with the right internal cues. As babies when we weren't hungry, we would push the food away. If it didn't agree with us, we wouldn't force it down (like we do as adults), we would spit it up. As children, we refused to eat particular foods that didn't appeal to us. We would pick at our food to get exactly what would please us. Perhaps we were even accused of being a "fussy eater". We stopped eating when we were full or not hungry anymore with a simple statement like "I don't want any more." Other things in life were more important than food. If we had an important place to go, food could always wait. Living a full life, every moment, was more important than eating.

From early on in life we are trained to respond to external cues with regard to food. This promotes a lack of self-control and self-discipline, which is what dieting is all about. We are made to believe that we are powerless and need to be "other directed". We are taught to eat at set times, according to the clock, not at hunger times. We are desensitized to our true food preferences and bodily sensations. Dieting encourages portion eating, which ties in with external cues rather than internal ones. We learn to eat according to what our eyes tell us rather than what our body says. But our body has the final say so because time and time again we experience the discomfort of our overindulgence. The expression "your eyes are bigger than your stomach" holds true when we let ourselves be dictated to by external cues.

Diets deal another blow in the area of self-esteem. We may feel completely in control and competent in all other areas of our life except with regard to food and weight. And because of the social push to conform to the idealized image and/or lifestyle, we end up feeling totally incompetent as people. (Arenson, 1984)

Yes, diets cannot afford to work permanently. If they did, everyone would go on just one diet, get thin, and the weight loss craze would be over. But the great thing about diets, from the diet industry's vantage point, is that for anything and everything that a person can or cannot eat, a diet can be created. The history of diets bears that statement out. And there will continue to be new diets developed, new ways to combine food for a temporary weight loss, and mass consumption of diet industry products as long as the diet mentality is alive.

And alive it will stay. New hope is born with each new diet that is published that this will be the one, the answer we have all been waiting for. But it never comes and it never will - not in the form of a diet, that is. The diet industry banks its money on that reality - both figuratively and literally. There is alot of money at stake, and alot more to be made by perpetuating a lie, and an unrealistic ideal for women to strive for. And then after awhile the ideal will change, a little or alot, just to keep the public consuming. We will continue to play our role in this charade it seems because we have been conditioned, at great expense, to do so.

But what of the negative consequences to both the individual woman, as well as society, for all of this obsessing? As discussed previously, women have resorted to extreme measures in the past to conform to the social ideal of their times. Some women surgically had their lower ribs removed in order to be corseted into the proper shape and fit the social ideal. (Hynowitz, Weissman, 1978)

Today it's not ribs we remove but fat. We attempt to melt it away with chemicals applied to the skin's surface, we exercise strenuously to burn it out of our bodies, we go to have the excess fat sucked out of areas that displease us by their appearance, we get the fat surgically removed, cut away, and have ourselves stitched back up again. We also get plastic surgery to increase, lift, or reduce the size of our breasts, to tuck away excess skin on the face or other body areas, get noses reshaped and jawlines redefined. We dye our hair, pluck our eyebrows, shave or wax our legs, wear high heeled shoes to cripple our feet, long nails that keep us from using our hands freely, make-up to enhance what we are convinced must be natural ugliness, perfume to cover our natural scent, tight clothes to cause us vaginal infections - all in the name of femininity. (Orbach, Eichenbaum, 1983)